Getting Ready for Fall

I know you probably think I’m crazy. After all, talking about fall gardening might seem nuts when it’s been near 100 for a week, with little chance of much relief for another week, and a forecast in the 90s for the foreseeable future. However, one thing that might give you a little hope looking at that long-range forecast (even if it is about as reliable as a campaign ad) is that the overnight lows are going to be dropping down into the 60s in another 7-10 days. That means that the weather is starting to get cool enough that some of our fall veggies will tolerate it!

I’m going to be doing 2 separate trials in the garden this fall. One involving spinach, planting dates, and overwintering with row cover fabric and the other involving a variety of root vegetables and overwintering with row cover plastic. I’ll give you a lot more details about those projects next week, after Tomato Day is over!

I did do one thing beyond planning to get started though. I planted some leek and onion seeds yesterday. I’m a little late on them…they probably should have been planted 2-3 weeks ago, but it just didn’t happen. My goal is to plant them out in the garden by early September. They’ll be on the small side, but there’s nothing like pushing the envelope on an overwintering trial!